


Worse and Better

by servantofclio



Series: Branwen Lavellan [11]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Implied Female Lavellan/Solas, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Inquisitor's hand is getting worse. Then that much, at least, is better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worse and Better

**1\. Worse**

 

Her hand's been getting worse.

Nobody says anything, but Branwen thinks they all know it. She wears gloves all the time now, has for over a year, ever since the sickly green glow became visible all the time, darkening the veins in her skin, pulling the skin itself taut.

It hurts, too. It hurts so constantly that she forgets about the pervasive ache until someone asks about it, or it recedes for a moment. Sometimes it gets worse, and feels like the bones in her hand are coming apart. She wasn’t raised to complain. Her mother used to jolly her out of her childhood sulks and remind her that _there’s always someone somewhere carrying a heavier load_.

There have been poultices and salves and spells and foul-tasting potions, but none of the remedies anyone has devised have worked.

She can still hold a weapon, and at least the Anchor’s not in her dominant hand. Even so. She remembers, a ghost of a thing, how much it hurt when the Breach was new, how the mark seemed to be tearing her apart, and they said it was killing her. It had stabilized, in those early days, but now she wonders if it’s simply killing her more slowly. The Exalted Council meets to argue the fate of the Inquisition, but the Inquisitor’s fate? That her days might be short is a secret that Branwen carries. Her mind had wandered while Teagan and Cyril were thundering on, glaring down their noses at her: she’d wondered how much longer she had left, and the ache had settled into her bones.

She'd ask Solas about it if she could. One more question to add to the list.

Josephine and Cullen and Leliana have been too polite to remark on it, though she’s felt Leliana’s sharp eyes watching her. The others have been out of Skyhold too much, about their business, so she’s not sure if they know it’s been getting worse. There’s little enough need to bring it up now. 

And now, with the recent developments— the pain is worse. It burns, a cold pain, like being forced to hold a block of ice too long. It pulses deep within her palm, and the pain winds tendrils up her arm to the shoulder. Now she lights up like a torch, casting a light like veilfire into the darkness, and she wonders again. 

One way or another, this might be the end of her.

 

 

**2\. Better**

 

Branwen has heard that when people lose a limb, the pain lingers long after the scar has healed, as if the missing wound were still there. 

What she feels, instead, is an absence of pain that makes her feel light enough to fly. 

That does not mean everything is easy. Far from it. Besides the toil of disbanding the Inquisition—finding new places for the soldiers and the servants, transferring garrisons to local authorities, selling furnishings, and all the rest of it—there are the little things, the everyday things. With only one hand, she cannot braid her own hair in the tidy style she’s worn since she was seventeen. Josephine comes up to Branwen’s room without asking, brush and comb in hand, and does it for her. The first time, Branwen tries to tell her the tricky parts, how to weave the braids over and under each other, but Josephine stops her: “I have seen how you do it for years.” 

She could have delegated the task to a maidservant, but Josephine does it herself, marked in her daily schedule. It becomes a peaceful part of the day, Josephine’s clever fingers working at her hair, while they talk idly about their plans for the day. 

Branwen’s clothing must be altered, too; she won’t have loose sleeves getting caught on things or falling into the soup. She alters a few shirts herself as best she can, folding up the empty sleeve and stitching it shut, but one day the rest of her wardrobe disappears and is returned a day later. She has trouble carrying things, and puts more pouches on her belt, hardly ever leaving her room without an empty pack she can toss over one shoulder. 

Then there are the hours she spends in the training yard, learning how to fight again. The rhythms of combat are new, now, and feel wrong, and she doesn’t quite know what to do with her left arm any more. She has put her second-best dagger aside, regretfully. She works at the training dummies, and then she spars with Bull, again and again and again, until she feels ready to fall over. 

Dagna calls her down to the Undercroft to try one new harness after another. Branwen protests that it isn’t necessary, until Dagna offers her the one with a crossbow attachment. 

That afternoon is a good one. Branwen and Sera shoot at targets for hours, and end up in Sera’s room with a box full of cookies and a bottle of wine. 

Her arm doesn’t hurt, though, not through any of it. There’s hardly even a scar; it’s as if her marked hand simply... dissolved, leaving a smooth nub behind. 

When she sleeps, she dreams of wolf eyes watching her through the dark, but the days? 

The days are free of pain, and that’s bliss enough.


End file.
